I seek advice on the following stitched image which is not lending itself well to my interpretation of the scene. As many of you know, stitched images do not always come out neat and rectangular. Preserving all the elements contained in the individual images is difficult, if not impossible.
The final cropped image below (but still subject to tonal revision) could be an average picture-postcard scene, but never mind! At least it's higher resolution than ther average postcard print.
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I'd like it to include the following elements in the foreground (100% crops) which I felt I had to crop out in deference to the conventional recangular cropping procedures.
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As Alain Briot once wrote, all parts of the image are important. For me, the hut in the far lower left and the small group of people taking photos of each other, are an integral part of the scene. I really don't want to crop this out. So what do I do? An elliptical crop with a white background, or an elliptical crop with a black background? Or some other solution?
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Perhaps a background anecdote is called for at this point. The above scene was taken from Poon Hill close to Ghorepani in the middle of the Annapurna Range in Nepal. Ghorepani is around 2,800 metres in altitude and Poon Hill another 400 odd. So, yours truly took this shot from a height of 3200 metres. Absolutely everyone who visits Ghorepani, (makes no difference if your are 12 years old or 82), gets up at 4am to climb Poon Hill, with lights strapped around their forehead. At this time of every morning, there's a constant stream of trekkers meandering up the hill. At the top, the crowds are so great it's almost as though one had just arrived at St Peter's Square in Rome at Easter time (slight exaggeration, but you get my drift).
Now it so happens, prior to embarking upon this pre-breakfast hike, I'd had a converstaion with a young, Northern European engineering graduate, staying at the same hotel, who insisted that the famous peak, Annapurna One, 8,091 metres in height and one of the highest peaks in the area, was not visible from Poon Hill, contrary to popular belief. It was obscured by other mountains. This engineering graduate had got hold of some maps, compass another intstruments and calculated that the elevation and angles were such that Annuparna One could not possibly be seen from the top of Poon Hill.
The above panorama, I am led to believe by my experienced guide who accompanied me on this trip, includes a view of the summit of Annapurna One, behind the other peaks, as shown in the following crop. The peak on the right is Dhaulagiri, slightly higher at 8,167m. Of course, my guide could be wrong. If anyone can shed some light on this contentious issue, please speak up.
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Anyway, back to the image in question. What can I do with it? Is the unconventional crop going to work?